


Dear Draco

by unkissed



Series: Trading Places [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Closeted Character, Homophobic Language, M/M, Unhappy Ending, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 16:37:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11901780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unkissed/pseuds/unkissed
Summary: Theodore was the one who took the Dark Lord's mark, but it was Draco who left the first scar upon him.As told through letters written by Theodore to Draco.





	Dear Draco

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2015.

**JULY 1995**

 

 

Dear Draco,

 

I won’t be seeing you today as we’d planned. Father somehow caught wind of the fencing incident at your house and isn’t too pleased about you inflicting a permanent scar upon his one and only son. He has strongly advised me to avoid you for a while, at least until you’ve “cooled your head”, as he said. Ironic, considering it was I who had been the hotheaded one that had provoked you to strike at me so boldly without our protective gear.

 

Nevertheless, you struck cruelly at your most esteemed friend as if we were eight-year-old rivals again. Perhaps we have not ceased to be childish rivals after all. I still have not fully forgiven you. You will have to be exceptionally agreeable in order for me to consider extending you a full pardon.

 

I regret our plans for tea must be postponed until another day, indefinitely. Please extend my apologies to your mother, for I’m sure she already had something prepared for us. Do enjoy it without me. Within reason, of course.

 

Sincerely,

 

Theodore

 

P.S. You can make it up to me tonight. There will be a meteor shower, and I intend to partake of it with a pair of omni-occulars on the great lawn of Luckington Manor after Father goes to bed. Midnight, to be precise.

 

 

~//~

 

Dear Draco,

 

Your prompt reply was a surprise, though an unnecessary one. The timing of the response was surprising, not the response itself. I know you absolutely love to have the last word. I’m sorry, my dearest friend, but I must steal that smallest of pleasures from you yet again.

 

In direct response to your letter, yes, I realise I’m being an arsehole, though I do not agree that I sound like an arsehole. Using words such as ‘agreeable’ and ‘exceptional’ at age fifteen does not make me an ‘uptight prick’, as you so eloquently put it. It makes me a fifteen-year-old with a large vocabulary. And let me save you the trouble of wasting another owl by answering what I assume would be your response to this. No, I don’t need to compensate for diminutive physical attributes by using big words. I’m more than verbally well-endowed, thank you very much. Here’s another vocabulary word for you, Draco: ‘Innuendo’. Look it up. Learn to use it. It’s fun.

 

By the way, I think I have the right to be an arsehole for a short while. After all, you did nearly split me in two and I have a large scar to remind me of you forever – Every time I get undressed, I will think of you.

 

 

Yours truly,

 

Theodore

 

 

P.S. Bring a blanket if you don’t want to soil your clothes. Bring chocolate if you are indeed my friend.

 

 

 

~//~

 

 

Draco,

 

This is the last letter you will ever receive from me. I am writing to you out of gentlemanly courtesy, though it is more than Father thinks you deserve.

 

I’d like to believe that what happened several nights ago was a case of misread signs, for it certainly was not a case of me purposely misleading you. I told you to look up the word innuendo and to learn how to use it. It was not my intention for you to take things beyond insinuation. Insinuation does not imply invitation. I thought you shared my mature sense of humor, but now I see how we differ. What I had considered humor, you had considered flirtation.

 

I wish I could say that I have no idea why you kissed me that night under the stars. Admittedly, the scene was plucked from romantic poetry – you and I, lying upon the grass, shoulder-to-shoulder, gazing into the glittering heavens, heads tipping lazily towards one another. But what I saw as the reinforcement of our bond as friends, you interpreted as something else. Something unnatural. Something that young men, particularly pureblood men, are not meant to share.

 

I do not blame you, Draco. I can see where you mistook my fondness for you as something else. You and I share a bond closer than that of brothers. We are equals. We were partners. We are not meant to be lovers. Though I do love you. I love you as if the blood that runs through our veins is the same. This sort of love does not and should not manifest itself physically or romantically if our pureblood kind is to survive.

 

I forgive you. You have not yet said that you are sorry for what you did, but I know that you are. I saw the remorse in your eyes before you fled. And it is this remorse that assures me you will understand when I tell you that we can never speak to one another again. Yes, I also saw heartbreak in your eyes. But Draco, yours was not the only heart broken that night. Mine is shattered. You ruined the friendship and trust that we had taken years to build. You severed the ties between our families when you joined our lips together in a selfish act of recklessness.

 

So it ends here. You know it’s for the best. We’d only be hurting each other if we tried to stay friends.

 

 

\- Theodore

 

 

**JUNE 1996**

 

Draco,

 

You will never read this letter, but writing it gives me some sense of catharsis. If you had read it, you’d tell me you didn’t know the meaning of catharsis and insult me for using the word. But you are deeper and smarter than your outward appearance would lead one to believe. This is not meant to be an insult. I quite envy you and your ability to convince people you are something that you are not, or that you are not something that you are.

 

I’m failing miserably. I’m not a man. I’m not a Death Eater. I’m not a killer. I can’t even fake it properly. Yet here I am, being treated like an adult, being expected to act like an adult, with the big fucking vocabulary of an adult, shaking in my boots as the Dark Mark burns my skin more intensely each day.

 

I know I shouldn’t, but I keep thinking that this should be your fate. You should be the boy that the Dark Lord branded. You are the one that can smile and fake it all the way through to the final battle. You are the resourceful little shit that would find a way to do His bidding without getting your lily-white hands dirty.

 

When my father was sent to Azkaban, I willingly stepped up to fill his vacancy amongst the Death Eaters. I took the Dark Mark on my sixteenth birthday in March. When I did, it broke the spell I’d been under. The searing pain and the scorching reality of it was a rude awakening – I realized that I am not my father. I don’t want to be my father. All this pureblood supremacy ideology is bullshit. We’re all flesh and blood, regardless of our lineage. We bleed the same and we die the same – wizard and muggle alike.

 

I know that He will see through me. I know I’m going to die. I can’t kill for Him, for his selfish grudge against Potter, and so I must suffer the consequences of that. I don’t want to die lying to myself.

 

From a young age, just like you, I had been taught to talk the talk and walk the walk. And fucking hell, did I learn to talk. I spouted that bullshit so well, I even made myself believe it. I believed it so thoroughly that I pushed you away, and I regret that. I’d been miserably brainwashed at the time.

 

If you had waited a few months to kiss me, I wouldn’t have turned away. I would have opened my mouth and let you taste the chocolate lingering on my tongue. I would have pressed myself against you and let you feel my desire instead of putting you at arm’s length. Because I loved you, Draco Malfoy. I loved you the way brothers do AND the way lovers do. I loved you when you kissed me, and long before that, though I hadn’t been brave enough to accept it. I love you still.

 

I see you with Pansy and it makes me yearn for death while concurrently yearning for her untimely end. It kills me to see her pawing you and fawning over you and kissing you because I want you, Draco. All of you. I want to be with you and around you and over you and inside of you. But I know that I burned that bridge. You’re hers now, and I’ve no right to be bitter. The only thing that keeps me from taking a knife to my wrists is the thought of the Dark Lord replacing me with you – my equal. And I do not want this life for you. I don’t know why he chose me and not you, but I am thankful that he did. Maybe he is waiting until you turn sixteen. Your birthday is days away, and I hope you don’t come away from it with a mark on your arm that matches mine. If I were you, I’d run. I’d run far away, deep into the muggle world, where none of wizarding kind could touch me.

 

Like I said, you will never read this letter. The implications are too great within the words I write, and between the lines is a death sentence for both you and me. And so I will burn it. I will burn my true feelings and my traitorous thoughts. I will burn my love for you, lest my love burn you.

 

Yours,

 

Theodore

 

 


End file.
